Meet Melanie Coddington of Coddington Design in Sherman Oaks

Melanie, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far. After growing in Humboldt and earning two college degrees there, I found myself commuting from my Aunt’s house in Bakersfield to a job in Burbank that I hated. In all my free time I was watching HGTV, reading Architectural Digest, and mentally re-decorating every room I walked into. It never occurred to me that I could get paid to do interior design for a living. One day I answered Craig’s list ad for a receptionist in an interior design firm, got the job, and took a 75% pay cut. I was literally taking out the trash and answering phones, but I loved the creative environment and working with designers who cared as much about fabric as I did.

I went back to school for interior design, learned as much as I could on the job, and opened my own interior design firm in 2005. By 2007, I had two employees and bought my first house.

Has it been a smooth road? While making a home or an office look beautiful has always been easy for me, learning how to run a successful business has been challenging. I’ve learned to set aside a portion of the profit I earn for taxes in good times and for operating expenses in slow periods. In any given interior design project, something is going to be late, broken, missing or won’t fit through the damn door. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that! Also, I’m pretty sure this stuff is still not taught in design school.

We’d love to hear more about your business. Coddington Design is known for creating beautiful, custom homes and offices for our clients. I am so proud of my designers and how they put our client’s needs above their own. I have a client who we’ve designed a few homes for over the years. She redid her kitchen and felt like the dining room we designed for her a year earlier didn’t quite work with the new kitchen. Even though there was nothing faulty or wrong with her furniture, I bought back the entire room of furniture at full price and credited her account. We gave her a fresh new dining room that she loves and works well with the new kitchen.

We provide renderings of our designs before the client purchase anything. These renderings look exactly like photographs and it’s easy to switch out a paint color, light fixture, or sofa so they can see all the options before they commit.

Is our city a good place to do what you do? When I decided to move from Humboldt to Los Angeles, my mom said something I think was apt “Los Angeles vibrates at a higher frequency.” The energy here is palpable and contagious. I can’t think of a better place for anyone creative to hang out their shingle.